


Summer in Another City

by A S Lawrence (phoebesmum)



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Challenge Response, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-03
Updated: 2010-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-11 10:47:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoebesmum/pseuds/A%20S%20Lawrence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claudia Jean is hot - well, yes, but in this case we mean it literally. Hot, and in London.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer in Another City

**Author's Note:**

> Written 18 July 2010 for the Sorkinverse challenge _fic with prompts_; prompt: _ice cream_. Also note that the first line is "she is sitting" not "she is sat". Please stop doing that, people. Thank you.

She's sitting on the Embankment steps, her shoes off and her $400 Donna Karan skirt hitched up way above her knees. She's a public figure and this is a public place, but it's also a _foreign_ public place and nobody knows her here.

She hopes.

A little distance away children are running in and out of a fountain that gushes up unexpectedly from the sidewalk, and she wishes she could join them. She curses, unreservedly and in no particular order, ninety degree temperatures, commensurate humidity, supposedly civilised countries that have failed to embrace the concept of air conditioning, and the professional dress code that requires her to stay covered from head to foot, only her open sandals a concession to the heat.

It's no cooler outside than indoors. And she doesn't have a hat, and her red hair and pale skin together with the sunshine and the baking heat are a recipe for disaster. She should go back inside before they miss her …

… in a moment, she decides, leans back on her hands and turns her face up to the sun. One thing she regrets about these whistle stop tours is that she sees a great deal of hotel rooms, conference halls, and the insides of aircraft and limousines, but very little of other countries. Travel is supposed to broaden the mind, but when is there _time?_ And there's so much she's missing here, so much history: the ancient river flowing before her, the ludicrous Gothic gingerbread of the architecture at her back, the churches and the statues, the museums and theatres, the half-strange, half-familiar skyline. One day, she promises herself, when all this craziness is over, she'll come back to the places she's only half-glimpsed, buy a loud shirt and a stupid hat, join the throngs of tourists, and wander and gape to her heart's content.

One day. But in the meantime …

She's pushing herself to her feet when Danny Concannon appears, seemingly out of nowhere. He flashes her a smile. She knows that smile. He's pleased with himself and/or he wants something.

(Doesn't Danny _always_ want something?)

"You look hot," he comments, and his eyes, she considers, linger far too long and far too appreciatively on the length of leg she's displaying. She tugs her skirt back down.

"Danny – " she begins, wearily; they've been over this a hundred times before.

"CJ," he interrupts her, "I said you look _hot_." And, again seemingly out of nowhere, he produces an ice cream cone and presents it to her with a flourish. As ice cream goes it's a singularly unprepossessing specimen, already half-melted and with a little stick of flaky chocolate drooping precariously from one side, and she has recently resolved not to accept any more of Danny's gifts on the principle of _timeo Danaos_, but she has already automatically reached out her hand to take it, and now she's stuck with it. Literally, in fact. In sheer self-defence – because god knows how she'll get this suit cleaned if she drips ice cream down it – she swipes her tongue around the rim of the cone, catching the drips before they can run any further, and looks up to see Danny watching her. He's grinning.

"_Really_ hot," he says unrepentantly. She would get mad, but it's hard to be mad, not in any convincing sort of way, when you are sucking the last of a soft-whip ice cream through the base of its cone and, in any case … it's much too hot.

"I'm going inside now," she says again, with dignity, brushing her sticky hands together and resigning herself to the fact that nothing but soap and hot water will help. She takes a couple of steps, then looks back over her shoulder.

"You can come, if you want," she tells him.

"Thank you," Danny says meekly, and he follows her.

***


End file.
